Epiphany

We, with our democratic and egalitarian views, would expect all people to start out equal in their search for God. One could picture a great destination with roads leading in from all directions. Well disposed people all meaning the same thing, getting closer and closer together. How shockingly opposite that is to the way Judeo-Christian history has panned out. One people picked out from all of creation; that people purged again and again. Some are lost in the desert before they reach Palestine; some stay in Babylon; some become indifferent. The whole thing narrows and narrows, until at last it comes down to a little point, small as the point of needle - a Jewish girl at her prayers. That is what the whole of human nature has narrowed down to before the Incarnation takes place. Very unlike what we expect, but, of course, not in the least unlike what seems in general, as shown by Nature, God's way of working. The people who are selected are, in a sense, unfairly selected for supreme honor; but it is also a supreme burden. The people of Israel come to realize that it is their woes which are saving the world.

The security which we all desire...

The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment, He has scattered broadly. We are never safe but we have plenty of fun, and even some ecstasy, It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, or a football game, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.

--C.S. Lewis

I have nothing more to say on this. I think he says it all! Just wanted to share that with you today, at the beginning of this new year.

Interesting thought on homiletics

From a old posting over at Domine, da mihi hanc aquam:

4. Listen now, argue later. OK. Fr. Oprah is on and on and on about his latest trip to the therapist and he’s boring the snot out of you with tales of his evolving consciousness and how close he is to exploding into Cosmic Oneness with the Womb of Universal Is-ness. First, put down the missalette. Just put it down. Pay attention to key words and image and repeat every word in your head. Why? Because for better or worse, ugly or pretty, he’s the preacher and (however hard it is for us to understand why) the Church has seen fit to make him a priest. He has something you need to hear. Even if you need to hear in order to reject it. Listen now, argue later. If you start arguing when he launches into a description of his Naked Rebirthing Sweat Lodge Ritual with Richard Rohr and you tune out because you need to argue, then you can’t hear what it is you need to hear from him. You’re spending your homily time arguing with someone who can’t hear you argue and couldn’t care less if he could. So, don’t waste your homily time arguing with your version of Fr. Oprah’s homily. Hear him out and argue on his time later.

Good point. And frighteningly his intended hyperbole isn't as far away from the truth as it should be. But we're all prone to our faults...

Literature in Movies - Shakespeare is not dead

I just finished watching 10 Things I Hate About You a couple nights ago, and I am amazed that despite the extreme cheese that is this movie, there is still some charm to it.
I also marvel at how proliferative the words of the Bard are in modern literature and cinema. Can we not invent anything new? Well, that's open to debate... but I do think we owe credit to the amazing longevity of these works.

I've compiled a partial list of stories/movies adapted from plays of Shakespeare's. Feel free to leave some comments with additions or whatever you wish. I've intentionally left out direct remakes (eg Hamlet2, Romeo + Juliet, etc)

• 10 Things I Hate About You - The Taming of the Shrew (it even rhymes)
• She's the Man - Twelfth Night or What You Will
• West Side Story, Romeo Must Die - Romeo and Juliet
• O - Othello
  
• Men of Respect, "Scotland, Pa" - Macbeth
• A Thousand Acres - King Lear
• The Lion King - Hamlet (loosely based)
• Falstaff (Verdi opera) - The Merry Wives of Windsor

That's all I've got for now, but I'm sure there are some missing.

Streamlining

An airplane, moving wholly in the air in three dimensions, heads into the air stream. It is propelled by gripping the air with its propeller. The resistance of the air makes its upward motion possible, it climbs upon the air as a car upon the road. Thus, always the air is resisting it; always an air stream flows around and past it. The several streams flowing over and under, by the ides, form what are known as stream lines; they enclose a space of dead air which acts as a drag on the craft. Thus design must be adapted to the easiest flow of these streams with as little obstruction as possible, and the space of dead air they enclose in the wake area must be small.

The field of aerodynamics grew up around the problems posed by the motion of bodies through air. Countless thousands of experiments with models in wind tunnels built a mass of data. Finally, a design was worked out on mathematical bases to overcome superfluous air resistance, and the effort to obtain the perfect design was termed "streamlining."

Students of design studied birds. Then it was assumed that a drop of liquid falling through the air would take a shape of minimal resistance. So, the students studied high shutter speed photographs of falling drops. Hearing of these advances the world became fascinated. It saw aesthetic value in copies of nature. So streamlines were applied to trains, planes, and automobiles, with the promises of returning wonderful results of speed and saving of power...

If streamlines' applications had ended with transportation, however, they would have lost their symbolism and would have remained purely pragmatic. But, in the 1930s, they spread to buildings, houses, furniture, other things which are rarely required to combat air resistance. Putting aside special cases of environmental conditions (e.g. preventing large forces upon or resonant excitement of a structure), a building is inherently static. To sacrifice space, comfort, interior space efficiency, and solidity in order to give the outside look of something in perpetually rapid motion, is likely to engender restlessness in the occupant.

It represents the subjective ideal of speed divorced from utility. Not only can the ideal of speed never be obtained, but it is self-limiting. The ideal of speed which is non-specific has defeated actual speed itself.

Men standing at a bar, "killing" time. Women and children fretting over a game, puzzle, or contest, to kill time. Men and women quarrel when supper is not ready, but then quarrel again later when the evening is so long. They must get a new television to help pass it by. There is more time to kill because the subway, the microwave, and the instant food, all worked so fast. We use our telephones and electronics to get in touch Tom or Jane to talk about nothing. They too will need to kill time. What shall we do tonight, we have an hour to kill? Books, papers, magazines are slow. Even the radio is slow. If we are to do a good job killing time, we must do it fast. We might go out in the car. What is that snail in front of us doing? Now, we've missed the light. A cigarette, please, to keep us from doing nothing. Lighter's broken? Well, time to turn the old bus in, anyway. It's economically sound to turn them in every two years. The new model has an auto drive. There'll be nothing to do with your hands. What, then, shall we do with our hands?

....Roger Burlingame, c1934

Madonna de Bruges

I randomly wandered over to this on Wikipedia (the image to the right is in the public domain, by the way) and it struck a chord with me. And the timing is pretty good too! This depiction of the Virgin Mother with the child Jesus is particularly relevant as we will be soon entering into the Advent season.

This is one of the lesser-known Michelangelo statues, called Madonna of Bruges. That face is so exquisite, with eyes cast down in modesty as the angel annunciates her destiny. This is an image of such true beauty of women and of God's work in the world. And it seems to me to embody true love.

Please pardon the elementary and non-eloquence of this post. But perhaps it is best to just get to the point and leave it at that.

Pax Domini

Wes for President '08

Never expected this, but I'll tell you - he's got my vote!

Barack Muhammad Hussein Obama bin Laden

Aside from the obvious notion that this thing about Obama seems rather irrelevant, I'm actually pretty surprised that the Left is taking the whole speculation on being Islamic as such an insult. I had assumed that Obama and his fold endorse values of equality and stand against racial or religious prejudice. Well, poking fun at and large investments of speaking time to dispel the "secret Muslim" myth seems to be making a statement that appears contrary to these values.

I don't have much more to say on the topic, but feel free to comment with your thoughts.